Version 3, Updated 3/7/2013
(Online version of the book Reconciling With Your Wife)

How are you doing, husband? Is your wife
considering separation, or worse, are you already separated? How
are you handling it? Are you angry? Were you shocked? Do you
feel like you have just awakened from a long sleep, and now find
yourself becoming an intensely spiritual man? Would you like to
win your wife back and restore your family?

I cannot promise that all who read
this article and follow its recommendations will see their
family restored, but I do believe that it presents the best
biblical recommendations for a man abandoned by his wife --
particularly for men who feel they have been unjustly abandoned.
Brothers, as you read, keep in mind that what is presented here
is most effective for men who have given their wife no biblical
grounds for divorce. Those men, who have been guilty of some
kind of sexual sin or have been abusive, have wounded their
wives very deeply, so have a more difficult path to walk.
However, they will still find here great benefit.

Husbands, for
your information

When a woman first seriously considers divorce she usually isn’t
thinking about the theological implications of her desires – all
she knows is that she is desperate to get away from her husband.
She doesn't arrive at this state of desperation by a process of
calm deduction. She is simply reacting to the feeling that she
"can't take anymore." Her departure is typically a sign
that she has hardened her heart towards the man to whom she once
entrusted it. Likely, she has been hurt over and over, and
finally decided she will tolerate no more emotional pain. Her
leaving may have been an attempt to coerce her husband to
change, but more often it has been a desperate effort to
survive. She sincerely believes that she cannot endure any
more heartache, so she has reached out and grabbed onto the
separation like a drowning swimmer clings to a life ring.

One of the reasons she became so weak, and finally, unwilling to
go on, was that whenever she became hurt, she also became angry.
As time progressed, the hurts mounted up and the less she felt
able to endure. She inadvertently was doing what Christians are
warned not to do, and was letting the sun go down on her anger
(Eph 4:26), which grew into bitterness, which ultimately defiled
her (Heb 12:15). In a final act of self-defense, she hardened
her heart so that it would no longer be vulnerable to pain. This
wall around her heart seemed to give her the courage to
emotionally cut herself off from her husband.

Sadly, most husbands have few memories of “hurting” their wives.
But let all such men consider – if a woman does something as
extreme as leave her mate, claiming she can no longer handle the
emotional pain, isn’t it likely she is, in fact, in pain? (If
emotional feelings could bleed, a man would see a trail of blood
following his wife as she leaves him.) The truth is that a
hardened woman only got that way because her feelings got hurt
over and over. Herein lies the problem – most women believe that
they have communicated their hurt to their husbands, but most
husbands only have memories of their wife’s bad attitudes. All
those times a wife thought she was simply expressing the cry of
an injured heart, her husband only perceived hostility,
coldness, or hatred. She felt like she was begging for
tenderness and sensitivity, and he backed away because he
thought he was being attacked. My experience is that most women
leave their husbands, because they entered marriage with
expectations of feeling cherished and secure, and their husbands
unwittingly have sent the message that they are not. Hence,
those women end up feeling defrauded, then often bitter and
hardened.

The man who hopes to reconcile with a wounded wife must first
realize that for her to return to him will require that she
trust and forgive him. Such a wife may be consumed by
bitterness, but rather than concentrate on what his wife is
doing wrong, it is better that an abandoned husband think about
what he must do facilitate the softening of her heart to help
her forgive and trust him.

Understanding a woman’s communications

The Bible says that
a wife is the weaker vessel (1 Pet 3:7), not meaning that she has less
physical strength or stamina than her husband, but that she has
a more emotional nature and is more inclined to view life and
make decisions based on her feelings than is her husband (1 Tim
2:14). Because of this, and because women have a greater natural
need for their husbands (Gen 3:16), women are also more likely
to look to the marriage relationship for value and significance.
When men marry, most are clueless to these differences and
consequently, to the power they have to inflict emotional pain
on their wives. Simply stated, it is this basic difference
between men and woman that causes the misunderstandings at the
root of so much marital stress.

When women attempt
to communicate their feelings of fear, dismay, or anxiety, they
use words, cite facts, or employ a tone that causes a man to
imagine he is being attacked. In her mind she is looking
for compassion and understanding, but to his ears she is
finding fault with him. Unfortunately, when a man feels attacked
he responds defensively. He either
waits quietly for his wife to finish her tirade, defends
himself, counter attacks, or leaves.

Unfortunately for
clueless men, when a woman attempts to communicate her concerns
for herself or the family, she often does so out of fear or
distress, so her words take on what he perceives as an attacking
tone. Although a woman thinks she is initiating a discussion
that appeals to a man’s innate sense of protectiveness, he hears
it as criticism
of his faults. She feels she is appealing to
her
protector to rescue her.
He thinks he is the one who needs protection from her.

Instead of recognizing that his
wife feels distressed by something, he immediately attempts to
quell her stress and shield himself by quietly discrediting her
or angrily attacking her facts. This perceived lack of
compassion will cause his wife to become more frustrated, which
evokes more intense communication.

A woman’s goal in
such a conversation is not to win an argument or to flaunt her
superior debating skills. Simply put, she is typically crying
out for understanding, and wants her husband to respond with
empathy and help. She wants not to be corrected, but to be
validated in her distress. That is why a woman might make her
points citing “facts” that a man believes are inaccurate.
Unfortunately, we husbands think we can change our wives’ minds
employing logic and reason, and by correcting their
misstatements. But women usually aren’t trying to win an
argument and don’t want us to tell them that they shouldn’t feel
what they know they feel. All they know is that they feel
something deeply and want us to understand how they are feeling.
Correcting them is a big mistake on our part.

Here are a few
examples of how women attempt to share their hearts and how we
perceive their words to be attacks:

What she says

What a
man hears

What she means

Did you take out the
kitchen trash?

You’re
a loser! You don’t do basic things to take care of
me.

I feel so feminine
when you rescue me from looking at something so
obnoxious.

You’re never home!

Facts
or accuracy aren’t important! You’re just bad!

I’m lonely and
insecure when you’re not here, and I’m afraid you
don’t want to be with me. Please reassure me you
care.

When a woman does
something so extreme as to leave her marriage, it is usually
because she has sought many times to communicate her fears and
distress to her husband, but he has not tried to understand or
rescue her. Instead he has invalidated or corrected her
feelings. This is especially heart-rending for a woman, because
the very reason she chose to entrust herself to this man in the
first place was because she believed her heart was safe with
him. She was certain he would protect her feelings and make her
feel safe -- physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Over a period of
time, after a woman feels her heart condition has been ignored
by the man in whom she sought protection, she decides she can
tolerate no more pain. She concludes that not only is he not
safe with her heart, but he poses the biggest threat to her.
She finally runs away from him in desperation.

At that point we
husbands feel unjustly abandoned. We want to fix it by
apologizing for something, but we are annoyed with her at the
same time for leaving us. Unfortunately, a woman is not easily
won back by a dozen roses and an apology. In fact, the more
wounded she feels the harder she will make her heart to keep it
safe.

A woman’s heart can
grow so hard that she will mistrust everything about her
abandoned husband. If he confesses his failings to her she will
perceive him as self-absorbed. If he talks of his painful
loneliness and begs her to restore the marriage, it will prove
to her that he has no clue how much he has hurt her. If he
explains why he has done what he has done, she becomes more
convinced of his self-absorption and more confident that she has
made the right decision. Her mistrust grows so strong that if he
says black she will say white. To her he has
almost become Darth Vader. A hardhearted wife will want nothing
to do with the one who caused he so much pain.

How a hard heart is softened

What are God’s means for softening a woman’s hardened heart? In
Scripture, God reaches hardened hearts in several different
ways:

God
sovereignly touches them, or does so in response to our prayers

A
Christian’s new nature, if the heart is not too far hardened,
will respond to words of Truth, ie: spoken by a friend, a
seminar tape, a sermon, a radio preacher, a counselor, etc.
(These words are not often received when spoken by the
offender.)

The
hardened wife sees the situation from another perspective, like
King David when he was creatively confronted by Nathan the
Prophet.

Realizing
the impact her decision is having, or may have, on her children
or others

She
comes to a place of great spiritual brokenness and humility
caused by an overwhelming personal trauma or by the humiliating
exposure of a sin

A time
of mutual crisis, ie: compassion for her injured child may
temporarily get her outside herself, and cause her to lower her
defenses (or she may grow harder, blaming her husband for the
crisis)

She sees
something in her husband that gives her hope, so she lowers her
defenses to try again.

How a man might regain his wife’s trust

1. A man must first understand his wife’s condition:

She
originally decided to marry him when she became convinced that
she could entrust her heart to him.

She
views her husband as one to whom she entrusted her heart and who
then was repeatedly rough with it. She left because she not only
felt betrayed by the one to whom she gave her heart, but she
felt deeply devastated by the constant wounding.

She
has been hurt, so is now overwhelmed with a sense of desperation
to emotionally or mentally survive.

She is
likely unforgiving, bitter, and vengeful. (The wife
who has decided that she will no longer stay with a man who has
been unfaithful or abusive is not necessarily bitter or
hardened. She may just want to find a safer place to be.)

Out
of self-protection she has hardened her heart toward her
husband.

2. A wife who leaves her husband is hardened not just against
him, but possibly against God. A man must therefore pray, pray,
pray! He must plead with the Almighty to intervene for the sake
of his wife’s soul. God is a specialist in hardened hearts, and
a hardened believer will not repent without God’s softening
intervention.

3. A man must stop feeling sorry for himself, like he is a
victim of a heartless, contentious wife. He must see himself as
perpetrator of hurt – not a victim of rejection. Self-pity will
pollute a man’s prayers, and create an “odor” which his wife
smells every time she relates with him.

4. If a man is to reconcile he must be able to identify how his
wife feels, and repent of those things that he has contributed
to the problems. He must therefore, pray, pray, pray! He will
need God to reveal to him those things he did which accidentally
sent the message to his wife that she meant little to him.

5. Once a man is confident he has identified his offenses, he
should seek to understand his wife’s pain, before he repents to
her or writes a letter of repentance. A man’s purpose must not
simply be to win back his wife, but to repent and fulfill his
role as a follower of Jesus, making amends to one he has hurt.
The key in repentance is not simply confessing faults – it is
expressing compassion and empathy for your wife’s hurting
condition. Before writing any letters, be sure to read the
section on letter-writing at the end of this article. A
self-oriented letter can kill any chances of restoration.

6.
The greatest cause for concern for any man whose wife hardens
her heart, must not be that she has hurt him, is alienating the
children, or is destroying the marriage. An abandoned husband’s
greatest cause for concern is the condition of his wife’s well
being – as Scripture warns, a bitter or hardened heart is a
dangerous condition for any soul (Eph 4:18; Heb 3:13, 15; Deut
31:27; 1 Sam 15:23; Acts 7:51; 28:27). A husband must look
beyond his own frustration and be concerned that his wife might
be deceived and hardened toward God. He must be concerned for
her, because her steps are walking her away from intimate
fellowship with God. A hardened woman merits her husband’s
compassion, not his arrogance.

The Wrong Ways to Reconcile

1. Apologize in a self-centered
way.

Do not
make the letter about you. It is not about what you want.
It is not about your feelings. It is not even about what you
have done wrong. The only way to regain your wife’s trust is to
communicate to her your understanding of her pain.

Do not
offer explanations as to why you are so blind and why you hurt
her. It will only sound to her like you are excusing what you
have done.

No
matter how excited you are, do not share with her newfound
revelations you may have
discovered about yourself, related to why you do what you
do. It will only sound like an excuse.

Don’t
try to make her understand you. She’s not interested in why you
did what you did.

Do not
tell her of your present emotional condition

She
already believes you are self-absorbed. Do not talk about
yourself and prove her right. (Besides, putting the focus back
on yourself is really a sign that you are indeed self-absorbed.

2. Be certain she is aware of
her contribution to the problem

Blame or
discredit her in some fashion.

This
will put her on thedefensive, causing a negative
reaction.

Apologize
that you didn’t respond that well to her offenses

3. Communicate to her that you
have not changed

Repeat
familiar unfulfilled promises to change

Ask
forgiveness again for the same old things will only remind her
of unfulfilled expectations

4. Express anger or annoyance
when you speak with her

Yes, she
is hurting you and the children, so yes, it is natural to be
angry, but she believes she is simply reacting to your offenses,
so in her eyes, you are the last person qualified to point out
her sin

She
believes you owe her, so she will be even more offended when
your anger suggests that she owes you

She will
view your attitude as a further expression of the same thing
that drove her away.

Your
anger will express a lack of understanding concerning her and
the pain you have caused her. (The presence of anger reveals
pride in you that has not been dealt with, and the fact that you
have not accepted your huge part in the problem.)

5. Write a good sounding letter
without proper follow up.

If you
write a beautiful letter of understanding and repentance, but
have no change in your heart, your wife may at first get her
hopes up and begin to soften, but when she spots your
inconsistency she will become even more angry and possibly
harden her heart beyond your reach. (If you write a good letter, but lack the love and humility of Christ in
your heart, you will express annoyance at her rather than
concern. And she will feel it.)

If you
make promises of change, you must be certain to follow through –
perfectly!

The Right Way
to Reconcile

1. Remember that you are trying
to reach someone with a hardened and mistrusting heart

Her
condition was caused because she has felt unloved, un-cherished,
not cared for, despised, neglected, unimportant, and pushed
aside for your self-love and self-interest.

Your
goal must be to contribute to the softening of her heart, which
will require you to regain her trust. She will only trust
someone who understands her pain.

2. Die to pride and self
concerns.

You have
been proud and selfish now it’s time to “take the beam from your
own eye.”

3. Understand her hurt
condition.

She
doesn’t want to be right – she wants you to understand the way
she feels.

4. Own your failures.

The
things that you did to help cause her hurt condition.

5. Communicate to her that you
empathize with her and do not blame her.

Come
alongside and comfort her. Look to one of her girlfriends as an
example of understanding, ie: A girlfriend would likely look at
her, feel her pain, and express compassionate understanding for
what she is probably feeling.

Feed
back to her how she is probably feeling

Let her
know that you understand what it is like to walk in her shoes as
one who feels hurt, ie: "Honey, you must feel conned. Before we
were married I communicated to you that I would cherish you for
the rest of our lives. But since the first week, I know I sent
you the message that you weren't important to me. Whenever you
wanted to do __________ together, I would never do it. Whenever
you wanted to go with me to ___________ I wouldn't go. By
choosing my own comfort and convenience over yours I have left
you feeling that you weren't important to me, and I was a fool
to send you that message. You deserve more than that."

Listen
to her, don’t just correct her

6. Meet with an insightful
counselor

Make a
phone appointment with our office if you like

Have the
counselor show you how you contributed to your wife’s wounds.

Learn
the nature of her pain so that you can empathize and feel
compassion for her condition

Keep
reading -- the balance of this article will be very
helpful.

More understanding

A woman who leaves
her husband doesn’t want to throw away her marriage, but she
feels like someone deprived of oxygen. In desperation she
escapes the marriage just so she won’t suffocate. In the
separation she then feels like she can breath for the first time
in years, and doesn’t want to return to a relationship that only
robbed her of breath.

MEN, pay attention
-- that is how a wayward wife feels. She only departed because
she felt she could endure no more. Most women don’t want to rip
up their family and drag their children through the trauma of a
broken home. However, they feel they can’t survive unless their
husband ceases to pose the same emotional threats he has always
posed. In her state of self-preservation, returning to
suffocation is not even a remote possibility.

Most abandoned men
have no clue as to the demoralized state a woman’s heart reaches
in order for her to destroy something she wanted so much. All a
man knows is that his wife is mad again and acting more
irrationally than ever. A departing wife is typically angry, but
feels driven to her distressed condition and extreme decision.
She is escaping something that poses a horrible threat to her.

For this reason even
the most sincere apology usually doesn’t work to win back a
wife’s heart. A man who simply says he is sorry for hurting her
feelings offers her no hope that things will be different;
neither will a man who tries to guilt his wife into returning
with admonishment, rebuke, and discipline. Especially
unsuccessful is the man who tries both -- apology and rebuke.

A man must remember
-- a woman originally came to him because she thought her heart
would be protected. She left, because she felt unsafe. For her
to return she must be convinced she is safe. For this reason, a
man must make it his priority to understand how his wife
feels. She doesn’t need a letter in which her husband simply
apologizes for his mistakes or misbehaviors. She needs words
that communicate that he understands how shredded she feels
and what he has done to contribute to her pain. I want
to repeat that concept: The thing that will give a woman hope
that things will be different is if her husband is able to
describe how torn up she feels, and how he contributed to her
condition. She doesn’t need a well-rehearsed humble-sounding
script. She needs to be convinced by your words of empathy
towards her condition and by your deep humble remorse, as
you take responsibility for contributing to her pain. Remember
that she married you believing you would make her feel secure
and treasured; yet now she sees you as the biggest threat to her
mental and emotional well-being. The one person she looked to
for safety proved to be one most unsafe to her heart.

Men, if your wife
has left you, she has felt hurt for a long time. It is likely
that she sought to communicate her feelings, but you interpreted
the passion of her words as whiny complaints or attacks. You
responded not with understanding or compassion, but with
defensiveness and correction as you warded off the verbal rocks
she was throwing. This left her feeling alone, unheard, and
unvalued.

Now guys, if you
start feeling defensive to the foregoing statements, you are
missing the point. She felt those things! You
cannot tell a woman she shouldn’t feel a certain way. That is my
whole point – she sincerely believes what she feels and is only
responding according to what she believes.

If there is anything
you can do to help soften your wife’s heart, it is to gain her
trust. Your wife needs a letter or conversation in which you are
not only able to describe the depth of her fears and distress,
but do it with the remorse of someone who realizes that he
caused the pain. As an example, if you were in someone’s
driveway and backed over their child with your car, how might
you respond to them? Would you calmly say, “I’m sorry for
killing your child. I should have been more watchful and in less
of a hurry. I’ll do better next time I am here.” Or would
you hold the grieving parent in your arms, weep with them, feel
sympathy for the loss, and beg their forgiveness for what you
had done? Your wife needs to know you understand and feel for
her condition. Other than praying for a miracle from God, this
is the only thing I know a man can do.

How can a man determine what he
has done to hurt his wife?

Many abandoned men are in this
predicament, because they have always discredited their wives’
“complaints” as emotionally based and therefore, unfounded. It
is a wise man, however, who recognizes that whether or not his
wife bases her feelings on an accurate view of the facts, she
still truly holds those feelings. To her they are valid.
For example, she may not have actual grounds to fear for the
family’s financial future, but if she is afraid, then it is
important to understand that those feelings of fear are real to
her, and deserve compassion. Her feelings may be unfounded and
not based on facts, but she feels them nonetheless.

Consider in Scripture, how Jesus
responded to those who wept over the loss of Lazarus (John
11:33-35). Although he knew he was going to resurrect Lazarus
from the dead, he empathized with the mourners’ heartache. He
didn’t try to talk them into a more chipper attitude, by
presenting them with the fact of Lazarus’ forthcoming
resurrection. He didn’t remain perky, although he knew he had a
great surprise in store for them. Verse 33 says that when Jesus
saw them weeping, “…he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled,”
and verse 35 says, “Jesus wept.” Although their grief was
unfounded, he didn’t invalidate their pain, he felt it
with them.

It is a wise man that will learn
to validate his wife’s emotional condition. He can do so by
communicating his understanding of the genuineness of her
feelings of distress, fear, heartache, etc. It is a foolish man
who tries to talk a woman out of her feelings – worse, who
belittles her for them. If an abandoned man is to repent to his
wife of what he did to cause her hurt, he must do some intense
soul searching and investigation.

1. Determine what she would
likely say the offending actions are, if asked by another.

Since
your wife is the one who took offense at you, your ultimate goal
is to see the situation through her eyes. You may view her
perspective and subsequent accusations as groundless, but if you
want to regain her trust, you will need to communicate to her
that you understand what she has gone through.

2. Review her various
accusations from over the years.

She has
probably told you many times why there is a problem. Perhaps
only a sentence, or it may have been greatly exaggerated, but
the nugget is probably there to be drawn out.

3. Review your actions that seem
to have caused her retreating reactions.

Selfishness,
angry outbursts, periods of neglect, unfulfilled promises, quiet
bitterness, or any other offensive actions need to be considered
carefully.

4. If your wife refuses to tell you what you have done wrong, ask someone
close to your wife what the things are that she has shared with
them.

Discretion
must be observed here. You are merely gathering information, so
be certain you don’t end up trying to win this person to your
side. It’s reconciliation you are seeking – not victory
in a conflict.

5. Have a counselor help you
dissect your life, opening each closet of your soul.

One or
two visits won’t accomplish the task. You must drop your guard
and be willing to receive reproof, instruction and
encouragement.

6. Commit daily times to prayer
and the Word, allowing Jesus to reveal your blind spots.

An
insightful counselor will be able to help you discover your
blind spots, but only Jesus can bring you into full acceptance
of your true spiritual position and help you to accept
responsibility for the course you must take.

7. Set aside a time each week to
increase your spiritual sensitivity through fasting and prayer.

More on how to prepare a talk or write a letter of
reconciliation

I realize that I have already given detailed coaching for how to
resolve issues with your wife, but over the years I have found
that most guys at this point still don’t get it. We as men are
so different from women that I am convinced a little redundancy
is necessary.

I have been blessed to be
married to a very insightful, very articulate woman for more
than 35 years. In that time she has thoroughly explained to me
how women think. In the early years I shared with her letters
of repentance that I received from husbands and she would
read them and explain to me why they would further alienate
their wives. With her coaching, I have since received and
critiqued multitudes of letters of repentance from men,
yet have never received one that wouldn’t have been damaging had
a husband sent it to his wife.

To remedy that I once posted a
sample letter of repentance for men that they could use
as a template for writing their own. I found however, that guys
were using it, but it wasn’t from their heart, so their life
didn’t match their words. Such a letter needs to come from the
heart. If the words do not actually reflect your feelings and
insights, it will not take your wife long to figure that out and
she will probably respond by hardening her heart beyond reach.
Therefore, it is absolutely imperative that you listen to the
free lecture,
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Female Mind and
pray God gives you deep insights into your wife. Believe me, you
don't want to write an inadequate letter -- it will reinforce
her low opinion of you and could inoculate her for good.

A
successful letter or conversation must NOT be about you and what
you understand about yourself. It must NOT be full of
appropriate sounding apologies or promises of repentance. It
must be about your wife and her pain -- pain that YOU have
caused her.

Your wife must know that you
understand her wounded condition and how you have contributed to
it. Only after she senses that you have genuine compassion for
the wounds you have caused, is it possible that she will open
her heart back up to you. (Of course, apart from you, God may
move upon her as well.)

Brother -- you must understand
that no matter how strong your wife appears in her ability to
speak her mind, and no matter how capable she is in an argument,
she is not your opponent and never has been. Your wife is the
weaker vessel whom God has entrusted to your care --- to be
treated with gentleness (Col 3:19) and understanding (1 Pet
3:7). The Bible says she is like a rose (Song 2:1). Yes, she has
thorns, but her fragile nature must be nurtured and protected
from all threats. To protect her petals she must be kept out of
the wind and handled with tenderness. If you fail to water her,
miss the signs that she is starved for care, or treat her
roughly, her petals will fall off. Can you justifiably be
annoyed with a flower that has lost its petals after you've
treated it roughly or failed to protect it?

I offer you on this website what
I have learned as a counselor and husband, but my suggestions
come with no promises of reconciliation -- just increased
possibilities.

Understanding her wounds

When a woman decides she wants
to marry a man, it is often because she has responded to the
wooing of her heart. He pursues and courts her, and she feels
loved, cherished, and valued. Finally, when she feels that he is
safe with her heart, she agrees to marry him. On her wedding day
she then gives her heart to him. She doesn't give it to her
cousin, to the guy down the street, or to any other man -- she
entrusts her heart to the one who convinced her he will protect
it and keep it safe.

A guy rarely understands that
his wife has given him her heart, and doesn't realize that he
has the power to cause her either great joy or severe heartache.
Simply by the way he listens to her, the way he looks at her, or
the tone in which he speaks to her he can make her feel either
treasured or totally worthless. Unfortunately, by clueless male
insensitivity throughout his marriage, a guy can easily send his
wife the message that she is insignificant. Eventually, after
having her heart stepped on over and over, she is desperate to
emotionally survive, so she takes her heart back and abandons
the very one she thought would be her protector.

For a woman, separation is not
typically prompted by boredom or her husband's loss of looks. It
is mostly about safety -- she flees that which threatens her. In
fact, that is why many a woman will take out a restraining order
against her husband or forbid him from contacting her. She has
felt out-of-control and at his mercy for many years, and thinks
that she will remove her husband's power to hurt her if she
creates a "husband-free" zone.

No woman who invests years of
her life into a marriage will casually throw it away. For a
woman to abandon her marriage she has to be in a state of
extreme desperation. Tragically, most guys who attempt to
reconcile do not understand the depth of pain it took to drive
their wives to forsake their marriage. Consequently, they try to
reconcile by offering apologies or writing letters that are
mostly about them. If a devastated woman is going to open
her heart back up to the husband who continually stepped on it,
she needs to know that he sees the damage he did, feels for her
in her painful, broken condition, and will therefore make great
strides to avoid stepping on her heart again.

Think about it guys -- if a
playful dog bit you every time you went in the yard with him,
would you want to risk returning to the yard again? If a
nearsighted dentist accidentally cut your gums or cracked a
tooth each time you went in for a cleaning, would you want to
entrust your mouth to him again? For you to trust him, wouldn't
you need to know that he knew exactly what he had been
doing and had a plan to buy glasses? For a woman, it is not
entirely about hearing from her husband that he regrets what he
has done or has a plan to change. Since it was her heart that
was injured by the very one she expected to protect it, she must
sense that he fully understands how she feels, and that he has
become safe. My session
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Female Mind will
help you grasp that.

So as you write your letter or
prepare to speak to your wife, keep in mind that what is most
important is not your words, but your ability to
communicate your empathy and compassion. I want to repeat here
my earlier illustration. See her like you would see a woman
whose child you just ran over with your car. A woman who is
suffering such loss will despise a general, undefined apology
and promises of repentance. Think about it -- how would you
comfort a woman whose child you just killed? You wouldn't say to
a mother who holds the broken body of her child in her arms,
"I am so sorry your kid ran in front of my car. I'll be more
careful next time I am on your street." You would probably,
in reality, be at a loss for words, but great pain and remorse
would be obvious in your eyes. You would feel for her as a
parent, and if you did speak, your words, tone, and actions
would communicate empathy.

The only reason your wife flees
from you is because you ran over her heart with your truck. She
needs to feel the same empathy from you, as you would show to a
mourning mother.

It would not be wise for me to
provide you a sample letter, but at the least I want to offer
you further insights into your wife, which will help you better
understand her present condition, and which will increase the
possibility that she will soften her heart toward you.

If
she is a typical American woman, you can be sure she waited her
whole life for the man that would make her feel loved, valued,
and cherished. She wanted what any little girl dreams of – she
desired a man who would make her feel that she was worth
something, a man who would make her feel loved and secure. She
wanted to be the princess sought after and made safe by her
knight. She craved a man who would want her the way she
emotionally needed him.

As a teenager you probably
longed for a woman, but you weren’t thinking about security and
emotional intimacy. You wanted a female companion, a partner to
take care of you, and be available to meet your needs for
physical intimacy. These two distinct dreams ensured that
marriage would bring with it challenge for both of you.

When you were single, you
pursued your wife to win her heart. You wooed her with gifts,
candlelight, and soft music. Maybe you wrote her letters or sang
her songs. However you did it, by all the attention you showed
her, she felt desired and cherished, like she was a princess on
a glass hill who was worth a great quest. By the way you
listened to her, she came to trust you, finally feeling that her
heart would be safe with you. Whether you knew it or not, you
convinced her you would be her heart’s protector.

On the day you got married, she
entrusted her heart to you, but like most guys, you didn’t have
a clue how to take care of her heart. You didn’t even know she
gave it to you, so you didn’t protect it carefully. You kept it
in your pocket with
your car keys and slammed it down on the dresser every night
with your wallet. Unfortunately, after a guy says "I do" he also
says “I'm done.” He relates to his new wife the same as a guy
who has just caught a fish. When a man catches a fish for
dinner, does he leave the bait on the hook? NO. He puts his lure
in the tackle box, and takes his fish home to eat. He got what
he came for, so stopped fishing.

As guys we enjoy romance, but it
does not mean to us what it means to a woman. We like romance
and use it like bait to catch a woman. But after we land
ourselves a wife, we put the lure in the tackle box and stop
fishing. We cease doing that which our wives believed we would
do forever. In her heart she said, “Yes, I will marry you,
because I want to feel this way the rest of my life.” Has it
occurred to you that she now feels severely defrauded?

You came along and led her to
believe that she could trust you with her heart, but it wasn’t
long after she married you that she began to conclude how wrong
she had been about you. You no longer made her feel special. You
were obsessed with work or anything else that interested you.
The only time you acted romantically was when you wanted the
marriage bed. She married you to build a relationship, but your
mind was stuck on you.

Most women who flee their
marriage do so because they tire of feeling the pain of
rejection. It is hard for them to extend their heart to its
protector time and again, just to have it dropped on the floor
or swatted back by him. Most men have few memories of swatting
their wife’s heart, but that is because they never knew their
wife offered it to them. They thought she was just complaining.

Those “swattings” occurred when
your wife was telling you what was on her mind. She often shared
her comments with frustration and she sounded like she was
complaining, but she just wanted to be understood and rescued
from those things that emotionally assaulted her or robbed her
of security. In her mind she was not on the offensive – just
passionately, vulnerably begging for help. Unfortunately, you
thought you were being attacked, so responded defensively. On
those occasions when your wife needed the most understanding and
support, you saw her as an opponent to be corrected, avoided, or
defeated. For years she has been trying to share her heart with
you, but you just got angry or defensive every time she opened
up. You finally wore her down, and now she has left. Your
defensive responses have left her seeing you as self-centered
and uncaring. In her mind, the one she married to find
protection has proven himself to be her biggest threat.

Is it possible that instead of
being annoyed with her for leaving you, you should see her as a
saint who put up with your clueless indifference for so many
years? Has it occurred to you that your insensitivity wore her
down? In 1 Peter 3:7 husbands are told to “...live with your
wives in an understanding way...” I beg of you my brothers
– strive to understand your wife.

She left you in
order to protect her heart. She probably felt like she was
suffocating for a long time, and now she can finally breathe.
Can you really blame her for leaving? She just wanted to
breathe. How much do you love her? Do you want her living with a
guy (you) who deprives her of air? You obviously want her to
give you another chance, but do you think you can be her oxygen
now? You probably never understood those things you now get
about her. You should probably tell her so.

If you now
understand what you did to drive her away, do you also
understand why she doesn’t want to risk with you? How much do
you love her? Will she ever meet another man who loves her as
much as you?

_________________________________________________________________

It is
God’s intention that a good marriage not be a
result of highly biblical marriage counseling or top-notch
coaching. I believe I have offered here solid, practical help
for a guy in crisis, but it may only be a Bandaid if that guy
does not see that the most important relationship he has is with
Christ. Our Lord cares about your marriage, but He cares more
about you and your relationship with Him. He intends that you
walk fully devoted to Him, like all those He calls. Walking in
full submission to God, sold out to Him, you will find the grace
and power to be the husband God calls you to be. A good marriage
is a natural result of walking closely to the Lord -- not of
learning the tricks of communication and love.

This crisis may have gotten your
attention, but it is God’s intention that He have your whole
heart. That’s really what your wife needs anyway – a man who
stands strong, who loves God with all his heart, and walks in
humility and compassion.

Most Christian guys get really
spiritual when their wives leave them, but in my experience,
only 30% stay earnest with God after the crisis has passed. That
is because they are desperate and are ready to do whatever it
takes to get back what they have lost. Unfortunately, such guys
are as crippled by self-centeredness as their wife believed them
to be. The same selfishness that alienated their wife in the
first place will make their zeal for God fade away when their
wife returns and the crisis is over.

My brother -- don’t you be one
of the 70% that flakes out on God. He has sacrificed His son and
purchased us with His blood, so that we would live sold out to
Him. Give yourself fully to Him, because He is God – not just to
get your wife back. Your wife will thrive on deep, selfless
love, but to give that to her will require that you drink from
God’s well of love daily.

I strongly recommend that a man
listen to my 8-CD set “Captains
Through the Storm.” There he will find deeper meaning to the
basis of this article.

Reb Bradley

PS: If you want immediate help, I have posted for you a 1-hour
audio presentation called "Unraveling the Mysteries of the
Female Mind." You can listen to it online or download it as
an mp3 file.If you desire free phone counseling or help with
writing a letter of reconciliation,
go to the
UltimateHusband.commain page and click on the links for
Phone Counseling andGuidelines for Writing a Letter of
Reconciliation.